OF THE WELLFIELDS.
At Ems, the morning of the same day, some time after the Trockenau
procession had gone past on its way to the station, two young ladies
seated themselves on a bench in the Kurgarten, beside the broad walk.
They had brought their novels and their fancy-work, and were of one
mind and one spirit in their purpose to idle away the morning, watch
the visitors, and, after the manner of Miss Austen’s sarcastic heroes
and ingenuous heroines, ‘quiz the company.’ They were English; they
were the daughters of an M.P. for one of the great manufacturing
towns. They were staying at the _Vier Jahreszeiten_, and they had
closely observed all the rest of the company staying there. Until a few
days ago, the most perfect sisterly harmony had reigned between them;
but a lamentable discord had lately arisen, and that upon the subject
of a man.
‘Dora, see! There’s your wonderful dark angel coming mooning along with
his sister. Pray don’t miss the chance of looking at them, since you
admire them so much.’
‘You are boiling over with spite, Lucy. I will look at them. I like
looking at them, and so do you, but you won’t own it.’
‘_I!_’ ejaculated Lucy, with supreme contempt. ‘He is very handsome, I
grant you; but I believe him to be a sham.’
‘What do you mean by a sham?’
‘He looks like a hero of romance, and I believe he is a very
commonplace personage after all.’
‘No one with such a voice could be commonplace, Lucy. Sims Reeves is
nothing to him.’
‘I should say you were cracked,’ replied Lucy, witheringly.
‘Should you? What a powerful imagination you must have! He is coming
down this way. I am sure “a dark angel” is an excellent name for him.’
‘I shall conclude next that you write poetry about him—a man who has
never spoken to you, and who doesn’t recognise you when he sees you.
And as for that tall girl, with her streams of yellow hair, she ought
in decency to put it up, in——’
‘In a chignon—do say a chignon at once! It would suit her so
admirably—about as well as it would suit Venus or Hebe.’
‘We shall never agree about them, that is evident.’
‘Well, I know that. Do let me admire them in peace. ’Tis all I ask.’
The causes of this deplorable breach of good understanding between two
generally loving sisters, were now too near for them to exchange any
further remarks about them at present. Lucy indignantly stuck her
parasol between herself and them, and studied her Tauchnitz volume
in moody dignity. Dora, perfectly conscious that the Wellfields were
unaware of her existence, had no scruple in raising her head as they
went past, and looking at them openly and scrutinisingly. They did not
see her, being absorbed in conversation, and looking intently at one
another. Avice was hanging upon her brother’s arm, which she had taken
as they left the hotel, and was gazing with a sort of rapt attention
into his face, as if something in his looks or his voice attracted her
irresistibly. He had been saying something, and had ceased to speak,
and this something seemed to give her matter for thought. Soon after
they had passed the two girls, Avice said:
‘Jerome, since I knew you—how long is it?’
‘It is just a month since I came to you here.’
‘It seems an eternity of pleasure. My life has changed so much since
then that I hardly know myself.’
‘For the better, do you mean?’ he asked, looking down upon the
delicately beautiful, upturned face, and feeling that Sara Ford’s words
had been true: ‘She will some day be remarkably beautiful.’
‘For the better, of course. I used to be very tired of my life
sometimes. Often I have sat in our balcony, when we had one at any
hotel we were staying at, and envied the ragged children playing in the
street.’
‘But why, child? My father seems to dote upon you.’
‘Oh yes! he dotes upon me, I suppose. But when the doting takes the
form of scarcely allowing me to leave the house, and never to go out
alone—in all the places we have been at, I never went to see the
sights like other girls—I am so ignorant—you cannot imagine _how_
ignorant. I know absolutely nothing.’
‘You know French and German, and Italian and English.’
‘What is that, when I am afraid to speak in them for fear of showing
what an ignorant little fool I am!’
‘And you know politics. I sat in silent awe and amazement the other day
when you were telling my father about the ministerial tactics in France
and England.’
‘Oh! because I have read the papers to papa for years. I don’t know any
grammar, nor any arithmetic, nor——’
‘What can you want with them? Grammar is bosh.’
_‘Jerome!’_
‘Of course it is bosh. Never be afraid to call it bosh. And as for
arithmetic, you can add up what you receive and what you spend, I
suppose.’
‘But I don’t mean that kind of arithmetic. I knew an English girl a
little while ago where we were at Florence. She was spending the winter
holidays there, and papa allowed me to go to see her sometimes. She
showed me the work she had to do during the holidays, and it made me
feel, oh, so fearfully ignorant. One of her sums was, “Find the present
value of £760 at four and five-eighths per cent. for eighty days.” That
is what _I_ call arithmetic,’ said Avice, despondently.
‘Do you? Well, suppose we look out for a governess for both of us, for
I know just as much about it as you do.’
Avice laughed and said: ‘It would have to be a very clever governess,
Jerome.’
‘But not old and ugly, or I could not possibly learn from her; and yet,
if she were young and handsome, I might fall in love with her. Upon my
word, I think I should like to have a governess, Avice. Shall we see
about it?’
‘How ridiculous you are! Since I have had you, I don’t care so much
about a governess. How horribly frightened of you I was, before I
saw you. Papa used to pinch my ear sometimes when he wanted to tease
me, and say, “I wonder what Hieronymus will say when he first sees
you—little interloper!” When I asked what you were like, he said I
should have to mind my P’s and Q’s with you. Naturally I trembled at
the very idea of beholding you.’
‘It was too bad to make me out such a bugbear.’
‘Oh, he did not make you out a bugbear, exactly; but he gave me a
fearful idea of you. And one day he told me that you had been sent
for—that was when he was ill, and thought he would not get better.
And he added that when he was gone, you would have all his authority,
and that he advised me to make myself agreeable to you. It was woman’s
mission, he said, to make herself agreeable.’
‘My father has curious ideas upon woman’s mission and place in life, my
dear. If he were to come in contact with the world again, he would find
that they were out of date. Well?’
‘I was in the greatest anxiety. I did not know whether to put on my
oldest, shabbiest frock, and to go and sit up in my bedroom, and not
come down till I was sent for, and not speak till I was spoken to.’
‘What end did you purpose to serve by such a course?’
‘I thought you would think, “At least she is quite insignificant, and
will not be in my way.” Then I thought it might be better to make
myself look as well as I possibly could——’
‘Which you knew to be very well indeed, Miss Vanity, in your bronze
velvet gown with the amber slashings, which makes you look like some
picture of Titian or Veronese, but which would not lead anyone to
suppose that you were an English school-girl.’
‘Oh, don’t call me an English school-girl. I think they are horrid.
They know so much more than I do. But do you like me in that dress?’
‘Very much.’
‘I thought, well, if he sees me in this, he will think, “Ah, after all
she is presentable. She might be worse.”’
‘Preposterous child! Finally, if I remember aright——’
‘Finally, papa was so ill that I forgot all about my dress. I was in a
black frock, sitting beside his bed, I know, when you came.’
‘Yes, I remember. My eyes fell upon you the instant I came in. I
remember being struck, then and there, with the contrast between your
white face and black dress, and great startled eyes, and this flood of
gold, Avice.’ He smiled slightly as he touched a tress of her hair.
‘And I remember that as you came in, I really turned cold with anxiety
and alarm. You were pale too, and your eyes seemed to burn upon me.
I remember how you walked up to my father, and bent over him, and I
thought suddenly, “Oh, I hope he will like me!” Then papa remembered
me, and took my hand, and said, “Here’s Avice—you must learn to know
her, for when I’m gone she will have no one but you; and she is a
hot-house plant, I can tell you.” And you, Jerome, you took my hand—I
could not speak. You smiled at me, and I felt as if a tight string had
been cut loose from my heart; and you said, “One only needs to look at
her to see that.” I must have looked alarmed, for you said, “Do you
think you can spare me a little of your regard, my child?” and you put
your arm round me, and kissed me. I would have _died_ for you, Jerome,
from that moment,’ she concluded, looking into his face with eyes full
of suppressed, passionate devotion.
‘Why, you never told me before anything of this,’ he said, in some
surprise.
‘Because I waited to see if you would change; if you would presently
begin to think me an interloper. But I know you don’t. Oh, I do so love
you!’
He took her chin in his hand, and looked down into the glowing, excited
young face; then stooped and kissed her, saying: ‘I only wish we had
not been strangers so long.’
They turned back, having come to the end of the garden, and Avice went
on:
‘I have a great many things to ask about, Jerome. First, I want to know
if we are rich?’
‘Rich! No. At least, not millionaires. I don’t exactly know what my
father’s income is. Somewhere about two or three thousand a year, I
suppose. He has always allowed me six hundred, since I came of age; and
it has been quite enough.’
‘But you lead such a simple life, compared with that of some young men.’
He looked at her, surprised. ‘What do you know about the lives “some”
young men lead?’
‘I don’t know anything, except that most of papa’s gentlemen friends
spend more than six hundred a year, I am sure. I could not help seeing
things, when we have stayed in so many places. You don’t keep a lot of
horses, nor play cards for large stakes, nor give grand entertainments,
nor spend heaps of money on dress.’
‘In all those matters I am severely virtuous, I confess—at any rate,
in the last. At the same time, my sweet child, I have always, by dint
of unwearying exertions, contrived to live up to my income; and perhaps
had it been larger even, I might have succeeded in spending it.’
‘I daresay; but you know what I mean. You would never be like young
Baron Zeppenheim, for instance, whom we knew at Wiesbaden. I really
believe he had hundreds of suits of clothes.’
Jerome laughed.
‘I think, sister mine, that such things have about the same
significance for us both. You look charming in your bronze velvet, with
the old Venetian clasps; but had you nothing to wear but some old black
serge, you would still be what you are.’
‘I suppose so. I cannot imagine what difference it makes. But next I
want to ask, have you ever been to our home—our real home that belongs
to us—and has the same name as ourselves?’
‘Have I ever been at Wellfield? Of course I have—ages ago, though,
when I was a boy of ten or eleven—nearly sixteen years ago, Avice; and
yet I remember it as well as if it had been yesterday.’
‘Is it nice?’
‘It is a fine old place—yes—in a fine country. I should like well to
see it again.’
‘I want to go there dreadfully, Jerome. Couldn’t you persuade papa to
let us go and stay there for a while when he gets better? He never
will talk to me about it. He says it is a musty old place, and that
I may think I should like it, but that I should be like himself if I
got there—dead in a week, _aus lauter Langeweile_. But I know better.
I should be able to do as I liked, and to go out without a maid, and
without gloves; and could have a room of my own to put my things in,
without the horrid consciousness that in a week or two I should have to
rout them all out again. That’s what I feel here; I feel an outcast.’
‘You have never seen the home of your ancestors, and you are sixteen! I
never in the least realised it. Certainly you shall go. I will work him
up to it.’
‘Oh, Jerome, you are an angel!’ she exclaimed fervently.
They were passing the English sisters again, who had quarrelled about
them; and on hearing this exclamation, and seeing the enraptured face
held up to Jerome, ‘Dora’ gave an exultant glance towards ‘Lucy,’ who
merely shrugged her shoulders.
‘Were you so anxious to see the old place?’ pursued Jerome. ‘Well, I
don’t wonder. It is a place to be proud of.’
‘Why don’t you go and live there? You could.’
‘Ah, that is another thing. Wellfield is a lovely spot, and the Abbey
is a place to be proud of, no doubt; but to live there, after the kind
of life one has been accustomed to here—_c’est autre chose_! It’s a
Roman Catholic neighbourhood. Brentwood is close to, you know—the
great Jesuit seminary, and a lot of those fossilised Roman Catholic
gentry, as proud as Lucifer, and as exclusive as—as only such people
can be.’
‘But surely we are their equals.’
‘Oh dear, yes! We have always been on the best of terms with them all,
chiefly perhaps because we have been so little at Wellfield that there
has been no time or chance for differences to arise. I don’t know how
I should like it to live in, unless——’
‘Unless what?’
‘If something I should like very much took place, I should certainly
ask my father to let me take up my abode at the Abbey. Who knows,
Avice, under what circumstances you may go first to Wellfield Abbey?’
They found themselves opposite the _Vier Jahreszeiten_. Jerome looked
at his watch.
‘I tell you what, young lady, we have consumed no end of time in this
discussion. My father will think himself ill-used. We promised to walk
with him at twelve. Come and let us find him.’
They went into the hall, and an attendant hurried up to them, only to
say that Mr. Wellfield the elder had been taken very ill while reading
his newspapers before rising, that a doctor had been sent for, and that
he lay now between life and death.
Jerome and his sister hastened upstairs, and found their father
in alternate convulsions of pain and intervals of utter, swooning
unconsciousness. The doctor came, and after a very short examination
pronounced the attack to be a most serious one. A Sister of Mercy from
a neighbouring institution was sent for. Hours of suspense and anxiety
passed before the delirious anguish of the patient at all abated. The
dusk of evening had fallen, when the doctor, coming into the salon,
found Jerome and Avice seated together in the window; the girl’s head
pillowed on her brother’s knee, her hand in his.
‘Your father is now composed, and perfectly sensible,’ said the doctor.
‘He is very anxious to speak to you alone,’ he added, to Jerome. ‘The
Sister will wait in the ante-room. Call her if there is the least need
for help. She knows what to do. I will look in again about midnight.’
With a brief good-evening he was gone; and Jerome, rising, went to his
father’s room.
[Illustration]